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Next Saturday, Liam Lewis will be one of the 30 hobby chefs cooking for the charitable event called #dinnerpartyYVR. Guests pay $40, sign up for a dinner at one of the homes of these cooks and all the proceeds go to a charity of the host’s choice.

It attracts confident, talented, gregarious cooks and yes, Liam is all those things with one difference. He is only 11 years old and in Grade 6. He’s got a business card (it says Little Locovore. Liam Lewis. Food Blogger and Aspiring Chef) and a blog (littlelocavore.blogspot.ca) on which he posts his food experiences. He’s on a mission to “be” someone in the culinary world and he’s well on his way. He’s got the media thing down pat already. An interview? Sure! A video? Bring it on!

“I guess I’m a little nervous but I’m excited,” he says about the upcoming dinner party. The theme, he says, will be Zombie Apocalypse and he’ll encourage guests to dress the part. (What else? He’s 11!)

“I’ll serve the food on camping gear or mismatched dishes.” His menu source is The Snacking Dead, a cookbook he got for Christmas, and ingredients will be “hunted, scavenged and foraged” but perhaps not literally.

“For appies, I’ll serve squirrel poppers but it’s not really squirrels. It’ll be chicken. It’s sort of like pan-fried chicken balls with panko. It’s crispy on the outside and soft inside. I’ll also serve mushrooms stuffed with spinach, bacon and cheese, and my main course is pork chops with roasted root vegetables and a blackberry gastrique (caramelized sugar, deglazed with vinegar).”

“Keeping with the zombie theme, I’m going to make a panna cotta and I’m trying to find a brain mould. I’ll serve it with raspberry sauce.”

This isn’t his first #dinnerpartyYVR. Last year, eager to participate, he teamed up with another cook, Clement Lau, as a sous chef. In the summer, he did a livestream cook-along with none other than Vikram Vij on Cooking Live with Vij last summer. Afterwards, Vij tweeted: “I’m so proud of him. He understands. He listens. He’s patient. He’s going to be a great chef one day.”

Says Liam: “We made coconut chicken and he gave me a cookbook.” He adds: “(At home) I made a lamb dish using his lamb popsicle sauce and it was delicious.”

Last fall, Lau invited Liam to attend a Chaine des Rotisseurs (an international association of gastronomes) event at the Shangri La Hotel; there, in his first black-tie event, Lewis sat next to Bruno Marti, an éminence grise of cooking in Vancouver and talked of food and life. He also met Eric Arrouze, a French chef now teaching and catering in Vancouver. Lewis reminded Arrouze so much of himself as a passionate young boy totally enthralled with cooking and invited him to cook with him. (One of many who take a liking to him and invite him to cook with them.)

Just before going to the Chaine des Rotisseurs event, Liam joined Lau, helping to prepare and deliver 60 bagged lunches to the hungry in the Downtown Eastside.

“It was especially poignant that Liam participated in the sandwich run in the morning, then attended the black tie dinner that night,” says mother Joanne Lewis.

Liam grabs all the mentoring that comes his way and as a blogger he’s been invited for tours and hands-on experience with food truck chefs Two Rivers Meats and an artisan doughnut shop.

What’s behind this celebrity chef in the making? He thinks it comes of being an only child and going everywhere with his parents, including restaurants. His mother says they did expose him to good food and he was always open to trying new foods.

But this might have been the clincher: “We removed mainstream TV from his life when he was around seven but we had Netflix and he gravitated to every kind of food show. He likes British humour and watched a lot of British cooking shows.”

The family had cut out processed foods and cooked from scratch with organic, whole foods. Liam cooks for the family as much as his time allows. (He’s also taking figure skating lessons.) The evening before the interview, Lewis made a vegetarian dinner for the family.

Mom, however, says he didn’t take inspiration from her. “I’m not a good cook. I’m basic. The food community here (in Vancouver) is very happy to share and are very inclusive. A lot of people have embraced him and allowed him to explore his passion.”

Says Liam: “I want to learn as much as I can.” He adds: “Knife skills, recipes, different dishes.” He’s taken two children’s classes at the Pacific Institute for Culinary Arts in Vancouver. He and his mom were taking a French bistro cooking class at Dirty Apron cooking school the day after I interviewed him.

“It’s inspiring to see an 11-year-old so passionate about cooking,” he says. “And no joke, he had good knife skills and was cooking duck on his own, showing his mom how to do things. It’s pretty rare to see a kid correcting his mom on how to use the knife. I had to chuckle. He was definitely all about food and better than half the adults in the class. If I had to mark him, for an 11-year-old, I’d give him 11 out of 10. I invited him back to cook together.” And of course, Liam took up on the offer to make arugula goat cheese ravioli with walnut sage butter sauce with Robertson.

The #dinnerpartyYVR Saturday includes wine and beer pairings, so I ask how he’ll manage that. No worries, he says. That’s being done by others.

“They read the menus and pair our meals with wine and beer. They encourage me to know what goes with what but not to drink it, obviously.” He has chosen Quest Food Exchange to receive the proceeds from the dinner. The organization operates non-profit grocery stores for the poor.

Some day, Liam says, he’ll open a restaurant.

“I’m still learning at this point but maybe it’ll be a bistro with comfort food.”

But before that, he’d like to put his cooking chops up to scrutiny in a cooking show like MasterChef Junior, where kids go head to head in a competitive cooking show.

“There’s an American one and a British one. I’m hoping for a Canadian one,” he says. “I don’t get stage fright.”

Chef Liam still had room at his Zombie Apocalypse dinner at press time. Dinner with a future celebrity chef, anyone? Just sayin’. Go to dinnerpartyyvr.com/meals to buy in.

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At just 11, the Little Locovore has the chops for success (with video)

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